


Alone

by castrophrenia



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Dead People, F/M, Gen, not even an attempt to be canon compliant, or an au, unedited unnecessary sadness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 05:54:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17037950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/castrophrenia/pseuds/castrophrenia
Summary: Her eyes stop on a picture just to left. A little girl with pale blonde hair and eyes just as green as Adrien’s, face split with a joyful grin as the boy in question holds her up for the camera. “Oh, that's my sister.” He says softly over her shoulder. “That's Sophie.”





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to write some fluff for another couple today. Instead, I am going to hell. I have nothing to say for myself I randomly wrote this in one sitting like a year ago and I’m posting it because why not.

It had been Alya’s idea. Which, in hindsight should have sent off warning bells because when did Alya’s plans every go well for Marinette? However here she was on a rainy Saturday afternoon alone with Adrien in his house. To be fair she had gotten better over the years. She could form whole sentences in his presence, she could actually look him in the eye for more than a handful of seconds at a time, she even teased him occasionally. Sure it had literally taken years to get there, but she had done it. She had not, however, been able to ever completely get over her monumental crush on the boy. 

In point of fact while in some ways it might be considered better, in many other ways it was much, much worse. All the things Marinette suspected were true, or induced were true from borderline stalkerish observation, were realized in full force once she was well and truly Adrien Agreste’s friend. Because of this, and for a variety of other reasons, including her own sanity, Marinette usually found ways to avoid extended one on one time with the object of her affection.

Alya meant well, she was really the world’s number one wing woman, but even Marinette remained terrified of the outcome of Adrien discovering her feelings. And the longer it went, the deeper the fear grew. Now it wasn’t just an idle schoolgirl crush on a classmate, it was a full blown years long adoration of someone who in his own words was one of her closest friends. It was a headier, deeper, and infinitely more terrifying thing now. So while Alya still insisted and not so gently prodded, Marinette found herself resisting more and more to her friends well-meaning attempts and schemes. 

Today notwithstanding. Today she was already here wasn’t she? Kind of too late. 

So Alya had started the whole mess in a group chat and Marinette was sitting on the couch in Adrien’s bedroom with a random assortment of canvas covered filing boxes scattered around the pair. He was digging through the one on his lap, one leg bent onto the couch and facing her, while Marinette idly flipped through the contents of the one in front of her on the middle cushion. 

“Nathalie said these are definitely the assignments from that year.” Adrien told her, looking up to catch her eye and offering a small smile. Luckily her heart didn’t full stop, just stuttered a bit. 

“We really don’t have to find it.” Marinette assured, turning back to her box, fingers just a little unsteady as she fumbled through pages and pages of old homework assignments. Idly Marinette was aware that Adrien was intelligent and well educated. She however was not fully prepared for the surplus of academic material he had generated, nor the bold red grades and averages splashing corner after corner of his work. “Alya’s just exaggerating,” Marinette continued with an eye roll. “I will understand unit circles.” She sighed lightly. “Eventually.”

Adrien shook his head. “Trust me these notes are amazing.” He closed the box in his lap and reached for another one. “With math especially having the right teacher can change everything.” Marinette put her own box aside and grabbed the next in the pile. “And my tutor that year was amazing. It’s not you.” Suddenly his hand was staying hers over the lid over her newest box.Maybe this time her heart did stop. Briefly. “It’s the teacher. You guys just aren’t…” He pulled his hand back and gestured vaguely. “On the same wavelength.” His lips quirked. “We just need to find you a new angle..”

Marinette tossed her box lid at him with a groan. “Really?” Trigonometry puns?”

“That was barely a pun.”

“It was barely a joke.”

Adrien laughed warmly and Marinette turned back to her box with a shake of her head. One day her life might not be full of blonde young men dead set on wordplay. Though it didn’t seem likely to be any time soon. Her own smile halted when her eyes fell on the contents in front of her. Instead of binders full of collated notes, assignments, and exams, or paper-clipped, stapled, bound tests, homework, and projects, it was full of pictures.

In ranging size small albums, in older style frames, in stacks stuffed in envelopes. Picture upon picture. And the kind Marinette had never seen in the Agreste household before. There was no professional lighting, there were no staged poses, there was not a single organized moment among them. They were from awkward angles, there were out of focus elements, there was poor composition, no consideration for lighting or fabric density or shading. They were real. 

Her eyes stopped on one picture near the top of one pile. She pulled it out of the stack. A little girl with pale blonde hair and eyes just as green as Adrien’s, face split with a joyful grin as the boy in question held her up for the camera wearing an identical smile. The girl couldn’t have been more than three or four, Adrien himself no older than six or seven perhaps. He must have noticed her focus shift because he had set the box he held down on the coffee table and was standing just behind her. 

“That's my sister,” he said softly over her shoulder. “That's Sophie.” He wore a gentle, tender expression as he scanned the photo Marinette held. He cleared his throat and moved back towards his seat on the couch. “I guess that one was brought down by mistake.” He continued in a trained, detached voice Marinette had begun to recognize a year or two ago. 

She looked down to the box in front of her, eyes searching through the visible photographs. Now she saw his mother, him again and...Sophie. Watched them go from toddling to walking, watched them go from toothless to grinning. There were a few more shots of Adrien that seemed to have been taken not too long before the age where they met. None of his sister. 

“Adrien?” Marinette began hesitantly, but she knew he’d understand what she was saying, or rather, what she was asking.

Adrien pulled a binder into his lap and outside of the very subtle crease of his forehead there was no way to outright see his discomfort. But Marinette was a self-professed, self-taught, Adrien Agreste expert. She had spent literal years watching him, first from afar and then up close. He didn’t need to lift his ever expressive gaze for her to know. 

“It’s okay Marinette.” He met her eyes and offered a gentle smile. “Father didn’t want reminders he…” Adrien gave another half shrug. “She was sick.” He leaned forward a little and delicately took the photo, blossoming into a warm smile as he viewed it. “When she died,” he began softly, “that’s when things started to change actually.”

Marinette moved the box from between them to her lap and moved over a cushion so they were next to one another. She took the binder full of geometry notes from his lap and settled it back in the box on the floor. “She looks a lot like you,” she said, pulling another shot of the two of them. In this one Adrien held the little girl’s hands while her concentration was solely focused on her feet. 

Adrien took the offered photo, affection coloring his expressive green eyes. Marinette had learned over the years how little it could seem Adrien understood of the oddity of his situation. She and Nino, and Alya, had had long, late, conversations about it in the past. In the intervening years from when they had all first met the sheltered model to now Adrien had to have become more and more aware what about his life was not normal, or rational. But it was difficult to say exactly what he thought about his own life. 

In many ways Adrien remained a puzzle to them all, and he kept the majority of his pieces out of public view. At times he seemed naive, and others uniquely perceptive. It made it hard to be sure what level of appreciation he had for his often bizarre home life. Though Marinette was inclined to believe he knew a lot more than he let on, especially in recent years. His last comment proved that to be true. She wondered if this conversation, this topic, might finally allow her to find out how much.

Adrien dug a hand into the box and pulled out a stack of photographs. Marinette bit back a smile, shifting the box to her right so she could look over the photos with him. “My mother tried to drag my father onto the other side of the camera,” he told her, catching her eye from the side and smirking lightly. “As you can see it did not work.”

Marinette giggled back and pointed to the image in front of them. “I see this is where he saw all that model potential.” In the photo a small Adrien was teaching his little sister how to stick out her tongue with maximum efficiency. At least that seemed to be the intent. 

Adrien chuckled and continued their perusal of the photographs.”You laugh but Gabriel technically has a children’s line.” He stopped on a picture of his mother in a summer dress, holding Sophie who was leaning down from her mother’s hip with a scrunched face, nose to nose with her brother wearing an identical expression. “I think I was seven months old in my first campaign.” He paused again on a photo of his mother holding an infant Sophie in a delicate white dress, her free arm was extended out towards the camera, like she was reaching for the photographer. She had a pure, radiant smile and such genuine affection and warmth in her eyes in was startling.

Marinette watched Adrien as he looked at the photo, tenderness and love filling his identical green gaze. She swallowed thickly. So much loss and they were still so young. It was difficult for her to fathom. Not only did she still have both her parents but her grandparents and even two great-parents. One on each side. Adrien conversely was so...alone. 

She dug into the box at her side, pulling out her own stack and flipping through. “Oh.” She said softly and Adrien’s attention snapped to her, and then the photo she held. In it was the ever elusive Gabriel Agreste. He was leaning against the headboard of an unmade bed, an open sketch pad in his lap. He had one hand occupied with a pencil, poised over the page, the other was resting on the back of the blonde shaggy-haired toddler asleep on his chest. His own hair, a much paler, less golden shade, fell across his forehead and the edge of his dark framed glasses. His lips were pressed to the crown of his son’s head.   
Marinette held onto the picture but pulled the stack back to look at the next in the bundle. As she hoped it followed in sequence to the first, Gabriel Agreste seeming to have become aware of the voyeur. He glared, though it bore none of the icy-heat Marinette had come to expect. It was at most exasperated, she’d almost call it affectionate. He had leaned forward, more clearly bracing his child, and reached for the camera. The next shot continued the moment, a shot of a rising Gabriel, a sleepy but waking Adrien yawning, the former advanced on the photographer who it seemed was a fair bit shorter than her subject. The next photo was of a downturned camera, capturing a very pregnant belly in a stylish fitted blouse, the tips of two pairs of socked feet, and a blurred masculine hand.

Adrien looked awestruck, his focus still on the first photograph of the bunch. “I’ve...” He whispered. “I’ve never seen these.”

“You said,” Marinette caught his eye. “You said he changed? After your sister?”

Adrien swallowed and sighed. “It’s more like I think that’s what happened.” He took the first photograph from her and let his hand fall into his lap with it. “I was...I remember things from before Sophie got sick. But that’s still just her and my mother I don’t…” He used his free hand to rub the back of his neck. “I don’t really remember. Him.” His thumb passed over the photograph. “It’s mostly vague. I know now that’s the year he took the company public. Just after she was born.” Marinette stayed silent, hoping it would encourage him to continue. 

“It happened quickly. I remember one day I went to wake her up,” He reached over Marinette into the box and pulled out a shot she had missed earlier. A very young Adrien was holding a tiny Sophie, his mother behind him and bracing the two in turn. “We were supposed to go to the Luxembourg Garden that day,” Marinette had moved to lean an elbow on the back of the couch, bracing her cheek against her fist so she could watch him. “I was going through a boat phase,” he added with a sheepish smile that Marinette returned. He sighed. “She passed away a couple of months later.”

Adrien let his head fall back onto the couch cushions, eyes on the ceiling. “After that I think he, I mean now when I look back, I think he thought if he kept us here if he kept us…”

“Safe,” Marinette supplied with a whisper.

Adrien turned his head to catch her eye and nodded, shifting back to his ceiling. “He moved to his office back home. My mother stopped modeling.” He scrubbed his face with his hands. “I asked about school.” His voice was so quiet if Marinette had breathed too loudly she might have missed it. “Without Sophie it...I didn’t want to be…” 

“Alone,” Marinette added again, and again he gave the barest of nods. 

“I thought it would help,” he continued. “If I didn’t...If I wasn’t difficult I thought…” 

Marinette swallowed, feeling her eyes prick she settled her gaze anywhere but the boy in front of her. She thought about Adrien, Adrien who couldn’t have even been eight years old, who lost his baby sister, who thought if he was obedient enough his father wouldn’t grieve as harshly. She thought about Adrien, not long enough later, not old enough still, losing his mother and never knowing why. She thought about the big empty house she was in at the moment. Pristine and devoid of color, of noise and life. How quiet it must have gotten without that bright, smiling, joyful little girl. How silent it must have been without the laughter of that bright, smiling, loving woman. 

Marinette darted forward, unthinking, and pulled Adrien into an impossibly tight embrace, burying her face into his shoulder. 

“Marinette?” he asked tentatively, but not pulling back from her impulsive hug. “What-”

“Shut up and let me hug you.”

“Okay.” He wrapped his own arms around her and she tightened her grip in response, feeling a few tears slip down her cheek. “Okay,” he repeated more quietly.

Two days later Marinette showed up unannounced at the Agreste household. Nathalie was decidedly surprised when the staff informed her but nevertheless she was allowed up to Adrien’s room. There would always be a part of Marinette that wanted to shrink into a ball and die when faced with situations that terrified her. Like talking to her crush. However there was another part of her, a part that grew larger and larger every time she donned her mask, that rose to challenges instead. Especially when someone else’s well-being or happiness were on the line. Then she had the bravery and courage of ten. 

So she raised a hand and knocked, and it only shook slightly when she pushed open the door. Adrien’s eyes immediately fell on the large wrapped package she held. They made their way to his desk, him taking his chair, her sitting on the edge of the armrest of his couch. “You know it’s not my birthday right?” Adrien said with a half smile as he took the offered gift.

“Well, Facebook definitely lied to me,” Marinette quipped, putting a hand forward. “Give it back.”

Adrien gave a weak laugh and ran a finger under the edge of the wrapping paper, slicing through it. “I’m not missing like a...friendship anniversary or something right?”

“Yes, and I’m devastated,” Marinette shot back. Adrien’s hand immediately stilled and he looked up to her cautiously. Marinette laughed. “It’s an ‘I don’t need a reason I’m your friend’ gift, Adrien.” She nudged his shin with her toe. “Just, open it.” 

Appeased he popped another corner of tape. Rolling her eyes Marinette grabbed the edge and tore it harshly. “It’s wrapping paper, it’s made to be shredded.” He shot her a bright grin that made her knees watery and ripped into the rest of the paper.

Once he realized he had the thing backwards he turned it around and his cheeky smile dropped, something more akin to surprise taking its place. “Oh.”

It had taken the better part of the two days to find all of the pictures, and to find a place that could still develop them on site, but in a reasonable time frame. However after those two days Marinette had amassed quite the collection of candid photographs of them and their friends. Ever the designer, ever the visually driven, of course she had arranged them in a collage. There was a group shot of them all at the center, larger than the rest, and then she let it drift outwards, every person getting their own direction until the edges were just solo shots or those with one other person, usually Adrien.

In theory it of course would have been easier to keep them digital, to pull them up in an editing suite and manipulate them that way. But Adrien had those, they were the backgrounds of his computer, his screen saver. What he didn’t have were real, framed photos, so that’s what Marinette wanted to give him. 

She knew his father would never allow him to put those old photos up, that much was clear in the years she had come to know the fashion titan. So she had to be clever, she had to give him something without it being obvious. It took a minute, his eyes darting over all the photos in turn, laughing at some, smiling at others but eventually he noticed. 

“Is that?” He trailed, finger hovering over the glass his gaze traveled up to her and she nodded, biting her lip. Hoping beyond hope that she hadn’t overstepped. Because tucked in between the photos of Alya and Nino, of even Chloe and Marinette, hidden from plain sight so you’d have to be staring intently, were Sophie and his mother and one preoccupied designer with a sleeping toddler. Marinette reached into her bag and pulled out the few photos she had essentially stolen and had copied.

“I thought maybe you could keep them close without…” She cleared her throat. She was losing her resolve. It had seemed like a great idea at the time, but in the light of day and his blank expression she was starting to crumble. Maybe she had truly crossed a line, maybe she shouldn’t have gotten involved, maybe she shouldn’t have-

Adrien stood and just as quickly pulled Marinette into a crushing hug, lifting her onto her tiptoes without seeming to realize their height difference. Marinette squeaked in surprise, all her breath leaving her as his arms tightened around her back and waist. She could die now, that might be best. Here lies Marinette Dupain-Cheng, she turned into an overheated pile of mush on the love of her life’s bedroom floor. She was survived by her parents and her kwami Tikki, cause of death Adrien Agreste. No one would be shocked about that.

“What?” She managed in a strangled whisper.

“Be quiet and let me hug you,” Adrien shot back. She couldn’t help but grin and let her own arms wrap around his torso. 

“I believe it was, ‘shut up and let me hug you’,” Marinette whispered into his shoulder. Even when he was quoting her he had to edit for politeness. Good god this boy really would kill her one of these days.

“Just…” He sighed, still not letting her go, “Thank you.” He started to let her fall back onto her heels. “Thank you Marinette.”

Yes, here lied Marinette, cause of death one Adrien Agreste. Who wouldn’t see that coming?


End file.
